


The Decline and Fall

by magnificentbastards



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - Bennett
Genre: M/M, dakin is a deeply terrible person, dakin is a misleading narrator if not actually an unreliable one, irwin has problems he will probably never be able to fix, movie canon, the author thinks about oxbridge a lot, they are not at all good for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-19
Updated: 2012-10-19
Packaged: 2017-11-16 14:54:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificentbastards/pseuds/magnificentbastards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Then you know: the truth matters, as a baseline. We’re not writing fiction. The facts are there, most of the time, for you to discover. What you want to do with them, the story you want to tell, which threads to pick out of the tapestry—that’s what makes it <i>history</i>, rather than just the past.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Decline and Fall

**Author's Note:**

> this one is for acrossthefloors, partly because its existence is almost entirely her fault and partly because she patiently and helpfully replied to all my agonised mid-fic “HELP, I’M WRITING ABOUT TERRIBLE PEOPLE AND THE WAYS THEY’RE BAD FOR EACH OTHER AGAIN” messages.
> 
> it also comes with the disclaimer that my familiarity with the city and University of Oxford is passing at best, more so re: it being set in the 1980s, so if you are an Oxonian and see a gaping mistake somewhere please do let me know.

\--

Stuart Dakin learns a lot of things in Oxford, things he thought he’d learn and things he didn’t know he needed to. He learns history, obviously, century upon century of it. He learns it like a language, works his way to fluency; learns to pick apart an argument like he’s undressing it slowly, to sit up in the library until three in the morning and besiege the wall of books he’s built around himself, to flatter his tutor and slip that particular trendy theory into his essays whenever it’s needed, regardless of whether he believes it himself.

And then: he learns how to cultivate his brash sixth-form confidence into something with rather more solid foundations. He learns how to hold his drink, though he doesn’t always apply the knowledge. He learns to wear white tie, which forks to use during formals, how to steer a punt. He learns to make easy small talk with exceedingly important people. He learns how to fuck, and goes out of his way not to learn how to make love. He learns how to tell when a conversation is a competition, and how to win it. He learns to walk through grandiose sandstone quads like he owns them, and he learns how to believe it.

There are hundreds of paths spreading out in front of him, more and more every day, and there’s nothing stopping him from taking whichever one he wants to.

\--

He’s nearing the end of Michaelmas term, about seven weeks into his BCL, heading into college for a taxation law tutorial, when he passes a poster pinned to the noticeboard outside the Porter’s Lodge that makes him stop and stare.

It reads, “’The Politics of Polarisation: British religion 1603-1660’– up-and-coming historian Tom Irwin discusses his new book and related documentary. TONIGHT November 21st, 7pm, Carter Lecture Theatre.”

Dakin thinks about it for the rest of the afternoon, drives himself to distraction, and gets no work done whatsoever. Sitting in the library, he stares out of the window, taps his pen against the back of his hand and frowns into the middle distance. It’s not as though he hasn’t thought about Irwin at all over the last few years; the opposite, actually, but lately it’s been at the level of grazed skin that’s scabbed over: a memory, nothing else, growing less affecting with time and distractions. He hasn’t _needed_ to think about it, and he’s had no inclination to do so.

The question, then, though he’d rather not phrase it in such melodramatic, Posner-esque terms, is whether he wants to re-open the wound.

After another fruitless hour in the library has passed, an undergraduate girl Dakin met at the start of term sits down opposite him, leans across the table, and asks in a whisper if he’s coming to the dance the neighbouring college is holding tonight.

Dakin says, after a moment, “Sorry, I’ve got plans.”

\--

He slips through the doors with a bustling group of undergrads, sits at the back of the lecture theatre behind a couple of conveniently tall men, and sinks back into his chair-- he’s hardly accustomed to making himself inconspicuous, though probably the turn-out tonight is busy enough that he won’t need to try too hard.

Irwin is standing behind the desk at the front of the room. He might be in his early thirties now, late twenties at least (Dakin realises he never did know how old Irwin was, and then decides that a specific number didn’t matter; _‘older’_ was really all he needed to know)—it’s surprising, somehow, that he looks almost precisely the same as Dakin remembers. No taller, certainly no broader in the chest or shoulders, even his bloody hair hasn’t improved. And he wears the same glasses. _“The last thing I take off.”_

Dakin thinks perhaps he ought to leave. He doesn’t, though.

Irwin’s speaking style hasn’t changed much, either. He still circles the subject, predatory, picking holes in its defences (anachronisms inherent in modern ideas of seventeenth-century puritanism, underestimation of the significance of Church ritual in public conceptions of religion, the misconception of the revolutionary nature of the wars) until it crumbles and he can finish it off with a thoughtful one-liner. He’s less controversial than he was back then, though, Dakin notices: before, Irwin would have been championing Oliver Cromwell as the Second Coming or the spawn of Satan, but nowhere in between. Now, Dakin thinks his lecture could almost be called a balanced judgement.

At the end of the lecture, Irwin’s answering questions-- about the academic publishing industry, researching the Civil War, the importance of broadening access to historical writing-- and Dakin sits, listening intently, his head tilted slightly to one side. He imagines himself standing and asking a question of his own, pictures Irwin’s face, the dawning realisation.

_“What do you say to the accusations that your work in popular history has robbed you of any possible status as a serious academic?”_

_“Where was it you got your BA from, Mr Irwin, I don’t think you mentioned?”_

_“I was wondering if there were any circumstances in which there was any chance of your sucking me off?”_

He doesn’t stand up. There’s always more than one angle of attack, and he flat-out _refuses_ to be eighteen again; he’s learnt a lot, in Oxford.

As the crowd files out through the back door, Dakin stays seated. He gets up as the chair of whichever student society set up the event thanks Irwin and leaves; Irwin’s stowing his lecture notes in his bag as Dakin makes his way down between the rows of seats.

 Last time, it had all been very deliberate. Dakin had known exactly what he was going to say from the moment he stepped through the classroom door, known exactly how it was going to pan out. Of course he wasn’t pathetic enough to do anything like rehearse the conversation, but the other stuff—the jut of his chin forwards as he spoke, his thumbs hooked through his belt loops, leaning back against the desk—oh, he’d known exactly what he was doing.

Now he’s winging it. But he’s learnt a lot about winging it, too.

He’s still thinking of something to say when Irwin glances up and sees him.

The look on Irwin’s face—from mild curiosity through open shock to something that’s both withdrawn and eager all at once—is a simultaneous advance and retreat. Dakin had forgotten, actually, the way Irwin’s mouth twitches at the corners, the lines that form under his eyes.

This is the kind of silence that makes Dakin feel as though the two of them are standing on a tightrope, fifty feet above the ground, without safety nets.

He lifts his chin, hooks his thumbs through his belt loop, leans on his hip against the nearest row of seats, and says, “Fancy meeting you here.”

Irwin says, eventually, still staring, “What did you think? Of the lecture, I mean, what did you think? Have you read the book?”

“Dull,” Dakin lies, immediately. “Obvious, uninspired. Just reiterating everything Morrill and Lynch have already said, but in language simple enough to sell for television.”

“I thought you’d have graduated by now,” says Irwin, and Dakin thinks he can see the beginnings of this _look_ on Irwin’s face, the one he’d first seen when he gave in that ‘turning points’ essay.

“I have. Got a first. I’m a postgraduate now, getting my BCL.”

“Law?” Irwin raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah. It’s a natural progression from history, isn’t it? You said yourself, didn’t you, sir-- what does truth have to do with anything?”

The ‘sir’-- which Dakin had neither planned nor expected, but vocalised almost instinctively-- hangs like a thrown grenade in the air between them. Dakin hates himself a little.

“Yes,” says Irwin quietly. “Yes, I did.”

“Changed your mind, have you?”

“There’s a difference between the kind of history you write to excel in an Oxbridge entrance exam and the kind you’ll write when you actually get there.”

“Yeah, I’d picked that much up, actually.”

“Then you know: the truth matters, as a baseline. We’re not writing fiction. The facts are there, most of the time, for you to discover. What you want to do with them, the story you want to tell, which threads to pick out of the tapestry—that’s what makes it _history,_ rather than just the past.”

\--

They _do_ go for a drink, actually, in a terrible little dingy pub off a side-street near Cornmarket. It’s still practically empty at nearly 9pm, which is a fact that speaks for itself, and last time Dakin was here he’d flirted lazily and fruitlessly with a foreign exchange student from Portugal who had got lost trying to find the White Horse.

Irwin offers to go to the bar, and returns to their table in the farthest corner with two pints of pale ale.

By a sort of unspoken mutual decision, they don’t talk explicitly about the events of that term four years ago. They’d once discussed, all of them in class together, the nature and possibility of historical objectivity, the merits and downfalls of writing recent and personal history; whatever their conclusions were, Dakin’s not sure he can remember. He knows his feelings on the topic.

They don’t talk about what the others (those of them Dakin’s still in touch with) are doing now, either. That feels rather too much like the average conversational fare of two friends who have got back in touch after a long absence, and that’s not what this is—Dakin’s not entirely sure _what_ this is, but it isn’t that.

“What’s next, then?” says Dakin. “Two books, a television programme, you’re practically famous. Going to try to make it on Broadway?”

Irwin’s smile is tight and short-lived, his fingers tapping the base of his glass reflexively, like he doesn’t know he’s doing it. “I can’t see that going very well. No, now that filming for the series is finished I’m starting the research for another book, actually. Social mobility in early twentieth-century England.”

“God, you really don’t like to specialise, do you?”

“I’d rather not have to restrict my interests.”

“Widening your audience, is that it?”

“That’s part of it.” Irwin takes a long sip from his glass, and Dakin watches, irresistibly, the way his throat moves as he swallows. “More to the point, though, don’t you think the specialisation required of professional historians is intrinsically limiting? Everyone’s pigeonholing each other into smaller categories, restricting our opportunities to break out of traditional, arbitrary periodisation and look at—repeating patterns, change on a human level, _thematic_ history.”

Dakin could say “ _Periodisation is neither arbitrary nor unhelpful, though,”_ or “ _You’re inventing a problem where there isn’t one-- and you’re still limiting yourself to British history, aren’t you, or is that just the most convenient field for your sales figures?_ ” He considers it.

Instead, he leans forward so his face is barely three inches from Irwin’s, licks his lips, and says, “Look, I think you and I can both recognise what’s a euphemism and what’s not, and if you say you’ve not been thinking about this since you first saw me today then you’re a bloody liar-- we’ve had one drink, how about another?”

Apparently—and Dakin would be surprised if it were otherwise, he supposes, but he hadn’t really had chance to consider it—Irwin might have changed, too, in less obvious ways. He finishes what’s left of his pint and regards Dakin for a moment before he replies, as though he’s writing in red pen on the margins of Dakin’s latest essay, “You mean to say, how about my sucking you off.”

\--

Dakin’s living in a college-owned postgrad house just out of the centre of town, and both his housemates are on research leave for the next month, so he and Irwin walk back there together. It’s not yet eleven, and the streets are lively if not actually busy; they sidestep the people spilling out of pubs onto the pavements, pass by clusters of students heading out of their colleges for the night.

Dakin slips a packet of cigarettes out of his blazer pocket as they’re passing Magdalen, stops under the streetlight on the bridge to light one. The lighter flame and the lamp above them cast a soft orange glow on his fingers, and he shoves the lighter back into his trouser pocket when he’s done, holding the lit cigarette loosely in the corner of his mouth.

“Would you mind?” says Irwin, holding up a cigarette of his own. Dakin raises his eyebrows, meeting Irwin’s eyes directly—invitation and dare and all the other uneasy cocky challenges he’s so exceedingly good at—and tilts his head forward like he’s baring his neck for an axe.

That tense ambiguous smile twitches at the corners of Irwin’s mouth again. With his cigarette held precisely between two fingers, he lifts it to gently press against the lit end of the one in Dakin’s mouth, lowers his head to inhale. Dakin glances over Irwin’s face (he’s watching the cigarette, now, or more probably Dakin’s mouth), his long thin fingers, the shadow his shirt collar casts on the skin at the base of his neck.

When he’s sure Irwin’s got his light, Dakin takes a half-step backwards and breathes in. Even with his eyes closed he knows Irwin’s watching him— _obviously_ Irwin’s watching him—and he can’t seem to keep himself from smirking as he pulls the cigarette away from his lips, tilts his head back, and blows smoke into the chilly air.

\--

The front floor hall and sitting room and kitchen had all been in far too much of a mess to enter unless entirely necessary, so Dakin had just shrugged and (entirely unwilling to keep the intimation out of his voice) invited Irwin up to his bedroom.

So here they are, across the room from each other, Dakin standing by his bed and Irwin next to the desk, framed by shelves of heavy law textbooks, files of old essay notes, dusty volumes of poetry; there’s a weird feeling about it, of someone in a place that they don’t really fit. Dakin imagines he might have felt the same if they’d gone back to Irwin’s place four years ago, that sense of disconnecting someone from the only surroundings in which you’ve ever experienced them. Maybe they should have just done it in the classroom. That way it would have _happened,_ too.

But, well. Irwin’s got the heels of his palms braced against the edge of Dakin’s desk, standing up straight in his suit that’s still a little too big for him, and he’d glanced around a bit as they came in but he’s not looking anywhere but at Dakin, now. Dakin had draped his blazer over the back of a chair upon entering his room, so he’s in trousers, shirt, and tie, standing there because sitting down feels wrong but going over to Irwin feels wrong, too. He reminds himself it’s been four years; still, that doesn’t explain why it feels like the rug’s been pulled out from under his feet.

He says, “If your glasses are the last thing you take off, what’s the first?”

“Dakin,” says Irwin, “I don’t plan on giving you a striptease.”

“I didn’t ask for one. You wouldn’t be any good at it.” He stalks across the couple of metres between them like he’s being pulled by the hips, keeping his eyes on Irwin’s; for god’s sake, he _knows_ how this goes, why should this time be any different? Why should Irwin’s approval be any different?

So he leans closer against Irwin until there’s barely an inch between them, all the places they’re not touching, his lips just slightly parted, and says, “D’you want to show me what you _are_ good at, _sir_?”

The noise Irwin makes is somewhere between a laugh and a gasp, this wry little exhalation of breath into Dakin’s face, and he mutters: “Yes, yes, alright,” and reaches out to pull loose the knot of Dakin’s tie. Irwin undoes the top buttons of Dakin’s shirt, his fingers brushing Dakin’s collarbone, and Dakin tries not to get hard just from that, because _bloody hell, finally_.

He reaches to push Irwin’s suit jacket off his shoulders and spreads his hand across the back of Irwin’s neck while he’s there, leaning closer. Irwin’s got Dakin’s shirt all the way undone, now, brushing fingertips on Dakin’s skin as he picks open the buttons and then leans back, just—staring. And, god, of course he’s staring, Dakin’s used to that, but there’s something oddly reflective in Irwin’s eyes that Dakin doesn’t think he wants to deal with at all.

He grabs Irwin’s hand, rubs his thumb into Irwin’s inner wrist, and pulls it to press just above the waistband of his trousers, his eyes on Irwin’s face. Irwin looks as though he’s about to say something. He doesn’t, though, just runs his fingers across Dakin’s hipbones and inwards, to slip open the clasp of Dakin’s trousers.

Dakin, catching himself by surprise, leans in and kisses him.

Here, at least, he knows what he’s doing: knows all the ways to press himself up against Irwin, trapping Irwin’s hand against his body, catching Irwin’s lower lip in his teeth and opening his mouth when Irwin starts kissing back. It’s a bit disjointed, like neither of them really believe it, but Dakin can deal with that for now—and somehow while they’re kissing Irwin’s fingers have curled around the waistband of Dakin’s boxers and, yeah, he can deal with that, too.

Irwin pulls backwards, keeping his hand where it is; Dakin sees he’s blushing, just a little, his hair messed out of place, his glasses very slightly askew. He shifts his hips up towards Irwin’s hand, and Irwin tugs Dakin’s trousers down so Dakin steps out of them, kicks them aside.  

Irwin swallows visibly and darts his tongue across his lips, says, “How do you—want this?”

“I was thinking along the general lines of your mouth on my dick,” Dakin replies, immediately.

At that, Irwin just raises his eyebrows at Dakin, gives another of those tight fleeting smiles, and says, “Then specify.”

“ _Specify_ ,” Dakin repeats, incredulous, “you’ve finally got me with my fucking trousers down and you want to keep stalling?”

“Well, ‘finally’ is probably the point-- this is several years too late, so I’d rather…”

“You’d rather what?”

“I’d rather it was good.”

Dakin’s the one who’s staring, this time, and Irwin isn’t looking away. It takes a moment before he says, “Yeah, okay,” that slow grin twisting the side of his mouth, and makes a loose fist in the front of Irwin’s shirt to pull him after as he takes a couple of steps backward, closer to the wall. He fits his fingers over Irwin’s and pushes them inside the front of his pants (and Irwin’s half-gasp at that doesn’t escape Dakin), wraps Irwin’s hand finger by finger around his dick and then exhales long and slow like he’s just taken a drag from a cigarette.

“Okay,” he repeats, his eyes half-closed, his mind thick with smugness and arousal and the realisation that that’s Irwin’s hand on his cock, after all this time, “so you’ll keep doing that for a while, and then I’m going to step back and lean against the wall and you’ll follow me. You’ll get down on your knees, take your bloody glasses off—”

“Go on,” says Irwin, slightly breathless already, twisting his fingers in a way that hardly encourages articulacy; it’s a good thing Dakin tends to be fond of the sound of his own voice.

“You’ll just get on it, no teasing, no bullshit, not at first, but not too fast either—maybe I’ll put my hands in your hair, maybe you’ll hold onto my hips and keep going—fucking _hell,_ it’s just a blow job, how specific do you want me to get? Talking and not doing, that’s you all over, isn’t it?”

He’s not sure what the expression on Irwin’s face is, only that he hasn’t ever seen it before. Not that he gets a chance to think about it; Irwin steps forward, chest to chest with Dakin, inching them both backwards until the wall hits Dakin’s back. Irwin drops to his knees, his fingers light down Dakin’s ribs, tugging Dakin’s boxers down-- the hand wrapped around Dakin’s dick is firmer, pulling harder, teasing his gasps louder as Irwin kisses the indent beneath Dakin’s hipbone.

In the end, it’s Dakin who takes Irwin’s glasses off. He reaches down as Irwin’s looking up at him, his fingers lingering on Irwin’s cheekbones, and rests the glasses on the desk at his side; Irwin looks different, without them, but Dakin couldn’t say how. He feels he ought to say _something,_ but—

\--but, _but,_ Irwin’s mouth is on him just as sudden as he’d said, down to meet the fingers he’s still got curled into a loose fist there, back up. No teasing, no bullshit. Dakin shudders from his hips all the way to the top of his head, feels sweat pricking the back of his neck. God, he’s acting like this is the first time he’s had his dick sucked, for all that it’s bloody good (and it’s _Irwin_ , which is- the point, really, isn’t it, and might explain why he’s acting like an awkward eighteen-year-old virgin, even if he’s only registering that because he’s not thinking straight).

“ _Christ_ ,” he says, bites it out like a curse. Bracing himself against the wall with one hand, he threads the fingers of his other hand into Irwin’s hair; Irwin glances up and meets Dakin’s eyes, just for a second, before ducking his head again.

Dakin’s not sure what he expected, honestly, but the way Irwin’s so precise with every fucking movement—so carefully, _thoroughly_ deliberate about this—well. It works for him, apparently; it _is_ working for him, leant back against the wall with his knees bent and his hips shuddering and his hand fisted in Irwin’s hair as Irwin licks up Dakin’s dick and sucks his way back down. Dakin bites his lip, moans through it anyway; not like he gives a damn about keeping quiet, now.

Irwin’s fingers are wrapped around Dakin’s hip, absurdly gentle, thumbing the bone there. It’s just more touch, more sensation to add to the intensity that’s making Dakin’s breath come ragged and uneven and punctuated by moans and incoherent, filthy sentences. Irwin’s keeping up the pressure of his mouth now, the swipe of his tongue in time with the jerks of Dakin’s hips, and Dakin gasps out, “fuck, _fuck_ , _there_ —”

When he ducks his head he sees that Irwin’s got his spare hand between his own legs and is stroking himself off, out of time with the rhythm of his mouth on Dakin, his posture wound up tense and trembling and his eyes closed, half-closed, then open and watching Dakin’s face.

 _I’ve never wanted to please anyone the way I do with him,_ thinks Dakin, out of nowhere, and comes into Irwin’s mouth with a groan and a shudder that feels like his whole body’s being twisted up and wrung out.

And he doesn’t have time to even begin to consider all of that because he’s dropping to the ground, only a little unsteady, to straddle Irwin’s knees. His head’s spinning, he’s still shivering a bit at the brush of skin on skin, but he trails his fingers down Irwin’s chest to cover Irwin’s fist, take Irwin’s dick into his hand. He bites his lip to stop himself saying anything, has enough sense left to at least realise that’d be a bad idea; instead he concentrates on what he’s doing, the squeeze of his fingers and the twist of his wrist and the look on Irwin’s face like he’s being taken apart, piece by piece.

Irwin digs his fingers into Dakin’s thigh hard enough that there’ll be bruises later and comes with a strangled, drawn-out moan. After a second or two Dakin falls back to lean against the wall, running a hand through his hair. He’s still breathing hard. Irwin’s slumped on the floor, dishevelled, carpet scuffs on the knees of his trousers, his hair a mess and his face flushed.

He lifts his head to look at Dakin, and Dakin couldn’t look away if he tried.

\--

In the end, it doesn’t really change anything.

Dakin puts his boxers back on, but doesn’t bother with anything else; he sits on his bed, Irwin sinks onto the desk chair, and they smoke. The wall seeps a slow chill through Dakin’s back, but he’d rather not get up. Irwin sits with one leg draped over the other, taking short precise drags from his cigarette. The silence is not at all comfortable.

When he considers four years ago, what was going through his head as he pushed open that classroom door, Dakin’s not actually sure what he expected. It’s possible that expectation didn’t come into it, that he was functioning on pure adrenalin, end-of-term recklessness, got-into-Oxford confidence: _let’s see what’ll happen. Let’s just see if he’ll do it, and if he does, that’s a bonus._ It’s possible. And it’s not like he hadn’t liked teachers before, wanted to impress them—Totty, obviously, and Hector in a manner of speaking (‘like’ feels far too insipid a word)—but it had always come so easily before Irwin; and he’d certainly never felt the urge to give the others, how had Scripps put it, _unfettered access to his dick._

Not that any of that’s relevant, now. It’s all just threads left ignored in the tapestry, overwritten by new records: _Stuart Dakin, Oxford, BA, soon-to-be BCL, not selling out because he was never in, had his dick sucked by his sixth form history tutor,_ is a far better history than _Stuart Dakin, Sheffield, three A-levels, aging teachers and average friends, had his dick sucked by his sixth form history tutor._

And everything feels easy, after he’s done it. School, exam results, getting into Oxford, getting _through_ Oxford. Irwin. So he tells himself. If he has to work for things it’s only ever temporarily; and it’s never much of a challenge, when it’s all over.

Across the room, Irwin taps the end of his cigarette into the ashtray on the desk. He’s still looking everywhere but at Dakin, his face more closed off than it has been all day, perhaps more closed off than Dakin has ever seen it. Dakin’s been differentiating for years between the challenging, dynamic Irwin who mocked their essays, who taught them to attack the question from all fronts, and the Irwin backed up against the window of the classroom, with that look on his face like he’d got nowhere to run. Attacked from all fronts. But there’s no difference, really, is there?

He’d have thought that would make him like Irwin less. It doesn’t, though, and that might be worse.

 _That’s that, then_ , thinks Dakin, breathing smoke out through his nose, _I got what I wanted, he got what he wanted, that’s all fine. It was a long time coming, that’s the only reason it feels—_

“You know,” says Irwin, “I always thought you’d do well, here.”

At that, Dakin just waits.

“Oh, the others too, of course,” Irwin continues, after a moment, “they’ll have got their degrees and go on to get good jobs. I don’t doubt it. And maybe that’s all this is about. But you, even before—everything, even with your painful first essays, I thought you were someone who’d suit Oxbridge.”

Dakin has been here long enough that it only occurs to him to say, “If that was supposed to be a compliment, it’s a bloody ambiguous one.”

Irwin says, “Yes, I suppose it is.”

\--

Actually, Dakin would probably have been up for a second round, and he’s pretty sure Irwin would have as well (because, well, why _wouldn’t_ he, why wouldn’t anyone). It doesn’t happen, though; for whatever reason, he doesn’t suggest it, and it’s not as if Irwin’s going to.

 _Turning points_ , thinks Dakin, as he shrugs on a t-shirt and jeans to show Irwin out.

They stand in the doorway, Dakin leaning not against the door but angled towards Irwin, Irwin looking back at him almost guardedly. It’s bloody cold suddenly, more than it was when they walked here, and the streetlamp down the road casts everything in that odd grey-orange glow particular to urban nights. Dakin ignores the chill prickling at his arms; instead, he says, “We should do this again,” and doesn’t know if he’s telling the truth or not. Maybe it’s not as simple as truth or lies. Very little is; certainly not history.

“I left my London address and phone number on your desk,” says Irwin, glancing away and then back at Dakin. “If you’re ever in the area…”

Dakin grins. It doesn’t mean anything. “And you’re already intimately familiar with my house, now.”

“You could say that,” Irwin replies, and at least he smiles back.

And then it’s back to Dakin feeling like an inexperienced teenager, like he should say ‘thanks’ or ‘bye’ or ‘I don’t know what I think about you any more’ or ‘I can’t stop thinking about you any more’. He won’t, of course—Jesus, imagine it—but there’s a hint of self-disgust here he’s not altogether accustomed to.

In the end Irwin just licks his lips briefly, says, “Goodnight, Dakin. And-- good luck on your course,” and heads down the front steps. Dakin watches him walk away. When he’s sure Irwin’s gone, he thumps his fist against the doorframe just hard enough to sting his knuckles, his eyes screwed shut. His bare feet are going numb; he steps backwards and pushes the door shut behind him.

Inside, the mundane grey shadows stretch out through the hallway in front of him. For the first time in years, Dakin doesn’t know what to do.

\--


End file.
